himself to himself, and to despise what is despicable in his kind as it is so far. This is why a passage beyond himself must be sought for man as he is so far, why the bridge must be found to that nature by which man can overcome his former nature, his last nature. Nietzsche envisaged this nature and kind of self-overcoming man, and at first cast it in the figure of Zarathustra. To this man, who overcomes himself and so subjects himself and so first determines himself, Nietzsche gives a name which is easily misunderstood. He calls him "the superman." But Nietzsche does not mean a type of existing man, only super-dimensional. Nor does he mean a type of man who casts off "humanity," to make sheer caprice the law and titanic rage the rule. The superman is the man who first leads the essential nature of existing man over into its truth, and so assumes that truth. Existing man, by being thus determined and secured in his essential nature, is to be rendered capable of becoming the future master of the earth-of wielding to high purpose the powers that will fall to future man in the nature of the technological transformation of the earth and of human activity. The essential figure of this man, the superman rightly understood, is not a product of an unbridled and degenerate imagination rushing headlong into the void. Nor can it be found by way of an historical analysis of the modern age. No: the superman's essential figure has been presaged to Nietzsche's metaphysical thinking, because his thinking was capable of making a clear junction with the antecedent fate of Western thinking. Nietzsche's thinking gives expression to something that already exists but is still concealed from current views. We may assume, then, that here and there, still invisible to the public eye, the superman already exists. But we must never look for the superman's figure and nature in those characters who by a shallow and misconceived will to power are pushed to the top as the chief functionaries of the various organizations in